Kindle Review – Kindle 2 Review, Books

A few recent articles have been claiming that Kindles, in particular the Kindle DX, will spark rampant book piracy.

1. TechCrunch thinks Kindle DX will be a success because PDF support encourages rampant book piracy. 
2. Guardian goes as far as to say (in an extremely convoluted way) that piracy will help ebook sales.

Here are a few random thoughts -

EReaders like the Kindle do allow for book piracy

One major factor preventing large scale book piracy was that it was hard to read books on existing screens – computer screens, phone screens, etc. were very inferior compared to paper. EInk isn’t. That means that finally pirated ebooks have a device that lets them compete with printed books.

Before we jump into what’s right or wrong let’s explore whether the effort of acquiring pirated books is worth the price savings.

Ease of 60 second kindle downloads Vs the lure of free ebooks

The effort of acquiring free ebooks is a combination of -

1. Figuring out where to get free ebooks.  
2. Software (like Torrent software) if needed. 
3. Finding a good copy of the ebook and downloading it.
4. Avoiding the risk of a virus.
5. Converting if needed.
6. Transferring from your pc to the Kindle or the DX.

This is hardly trivial. Piracy makes sense for $200 software – However, for a $10 book this is too much effort for a lot of people. For a $50 textbook its somewhat of a possiblity.

The obvious workaround would be for someone to either -

1. Break Mobipocket DRM; or 
2. Have an on-Kindle program that downloads pirated books straight to the Kindle.

Amazon can control what sites can be accessed via the Kindle and that rules out Option #2. Breaking Mobipocket’s DRM hasn’t been done yet – it does exist as a viable option.

At this point, the effort to get a $9.99 book for free is not worth the effort. There are however things that encourage piracy, and counter-intuitively, a lot of them are efforts to prevent piracy.

Barriers that increase Piracy

We’ll leave out people that use pirated ebooks without any moral qualms. Lets focus on the portion of readers that are undecided and the factors that would cause them to use pirated ebooks (without worrying too much about relative importance) -

1. Barriers that make acquiring and using normal ebooks difficult. BookSquare get it right – Unreasonable barriers cause piracy. Turning off Text To Speech is a good example. Pricing books higher than $9.99 is another.
2. Treating Customers like Thieves -  When customers feel they are being mistreated then they react by choosing piracy.  
3. Lack of policing. Content creators have to police the Internet for pirated content. A great example of publishers not doing a good job of policing is the rise of document sharing websites like Scribd. By now offering their books on Scribd they have made a strategic mistake.

Its a tough balance – putting in enough checks and restrictions to prevent piracy while not overdoing it to the point that well intentioned customers start choosing to read pirated ebooks.

The Kindle is great because its a closed system and also because it has set a precedent for people to pay for content.

Closing Thoughts

Piracy is somewhat of an issue for books. It becomes a big issue for textbooks as the price makes the amount of effort worthwhile. Publishers have the rather challenging problem that they are stepping into a domain they don’t understand very well and that has a completely different ethos. 

Piracy is definitely going to help ereader sales, especially the DX with its PDF support and larger screen. And there is no magic solution - Amazon and publishers will have to figure out a way to avoid mass proliferation of free textbooks. And do this while making sure they don’t overdo restrictions and incent customers to choose pirated ebooks.